Some years ago I remember reading a news report about New Brunswick's Auditor General findings that some NB Doctors were overbilling by extremely large amounts.

Of particular concern was the charging of Worksafe NB and Medicare for the same service. From memory this was something to do with a doc seeing a patient following a work accident and billing the fee twice for one appointment.

It was 2012 and all parties agreed "something would be done."

Four years and and something hasn't been done, apparently because of privacy laws.
Don't they have amendments to acts in Canada?

I know from my time in DSS/DWP in the UK that social security legislation is full of amendments to various acts of parliament.

They don't have to rewrite the entire social security legislation to make a change, an amendment will do.

Presumably the Auditor General's discovery of the double billing meant she had access to both sets of records in order to see the double billing. Did she act illegally then?

Does the purpose of an audit stop at seeing someone over claimed (is 'fiddled' too strong) and not setting anything in motion?

So make the act permit it.
amended by "except in the case of fee billing where an authorised agency may share billing information with another specified authorised agency."

Is there no declaration in the billing process like on so many other forms and processes? Nothing to say "I have not already claimed this"?

Does, or can, the process include "I apply for payment and agree that this may be checked with (the other) agency"?

When my wife was receiving a medical treatment costing $7,000 every 6 weeks, in order for the province to cover the costs we had to sign agreements every year for them to make enquiries of my civil service pension payer plus Canada Revenue and Banks for her, me, adult stepkids and mother in law - and Service Canada as the payer of her pension.

What happened to privacy then FFS? They can't do something similar but far less involved to stop double billing? Strewth.

And then, of course, there are things that come so easy.

Our (relatively) new Mayor, while a Councillor and prior to the election, voted against a proposed pay rise for Councillors and the Mayor's position.
(you know what's coming don't you )

She said "...current climate...couldn't justify...other people tightening belts etc..."

She's been City Mayor for a few months now and has "discovered" there's a lot more to the job than she thought previously.

So she's voted herself the pay rise.

All the way to the bank

How can I even begin to reply...this is New Brunswick! We should have a thread just devoted to the utter time wasting stupidity in this Province.

I have few regrets, in a happy and fulfilled life, and Canada isn't one of them...New Brunswick however

Over in BC, we can bill WCB and MSP visits. I believe that the latter is at a reduced rate. The circumstances under which I will do this are for instance a follow-up WCB visit which tends to be shorter unlike the initial one which is basically a lot of information taking and examining from scratch which takes a considerable time typically. this is then electronically submitted to WCB.
If for example with follow-up WCB visit, the patient required say review of their blood pressure, and issue of medications then I would submit bills both to WCB and MSP.
I wouldn't say that I do this particularly often, probably 20% of the time maximum as usually I'm dealing with the WCB issue predominantly. It is often just to save time if the patient needs a medication review following BP review etc.
I certainly wouldn't say that I am learning much from occasional dual billing, WCB pa reasonably well for our professional assessment and input and therefore I try and provide an accurate and full assessment.

Obviously I might work differently from others within the province, I am sure that there are probably some doctors over here that double bill similarly to the New Brunswick doctors although I haven't ever heard mention of this being a significant problem.

We are open to random audits which can be extremely thorough, I don't think I would have anything worry with regard to how I bill, I think I am pretty ethical and down the line. I am not in a position to say whether or not this case with all my colleagues! I personally feel that I can sleep reasonably soundly that night with a fairly clear conscience!

There are certainly other ways of gaming the system, one that particularly bugs me at the moment is a situation where specialists who are keeping patients under observation for certain conditions are now trying to get us to do a quick referral back to them every six months so that they can bill these as new referrals for which they will be remunerated substantially more than the follow-up appointments that they are actually doing. This again is I feel unjustly taking from the provincial health budget which is not actually due to themand could otherwise be spent on provision for example of say an MRI scanner which is desperately needed in our town, or recruiting echocardiogram technicians, our current wait time even for urgent echoes is one year!

So quite different to the single visit highlighted here then.

Well, bad apples everywhere.

Is there anything in the process that suggests only one fee should apply for one visit and only one body? I assume there is some kind of 'honesty' declaration involved.

That's the bit that irks me. It just comes across here as no check or challenge is possible and all while the same province required all that stuff about tax records, bank accounts etc from even my mother in law.

And then you read in the paper about action taken against social assistance recipients when privacy hasn't protected them on a fiddle so trivial in comparison to the loss highlighted by the the audit here.

Ooh, naughty.

But doesn't the time between a referral and the date seen raise an obvious red flag?

For example in my experience a patient might be seen by the specialist every 6 months but it might be a year or more from the original referral to the first visit because that's a typical waiting time..

Having a claim for something taking place so soon after a referral when the waiting time is so much longer looks suspicious doesn't it?

Not to mention why is someone having such regular referrals.

Perhaps it's their intention to put the extra fees obtained into a fund towards one

Thanks for your input